Houston we have a problem.

So let me start off by saying that no, I did not complete my goal. Now let me explain why. I had a giftcard to midwest brewing. I *very* quickly spent that on my kegorator setup and the supplies for the Bombs Away I-Paul-A. When I was looking at kegs, the options at midwest clearly were hit hard by the holiday shopping. Yes I understand that they are used kegs, but the dents in these kegs were not of my liking. I went back 2 different times and both times they had almost no kegs with massive dents. With that being said, I decided not to make the 3rd brew yet, but I will soon. Now onto my issues.

I ran into a lot of issues over the last few days. After 3 days, the irish red stop fermenting. It shouldn't stop that soon. UGH. I gave my buddy Paul a called and talked about a few choices. I decided I'd run to midwest and pick up a 2nd package of yeast because I thought that might kick it back off again. When I was there I was talking to one of the very helpful employees. He informed me that I might have not aerated the wort well enough before I pitched the yeast. Wtf is aerating? I had sort of read about it, but I had no clue so I picked the midwest employee's brain about this. What he informed me is that the only time it is ok to aerate your beer is just before pitching the yeast. I've actually never done this. They sell items which hook up to an electric drill and spin the beer extremely fast. Otherwise there's a few different ways to do this which don't require buying more gear. Well, my dumb ass didn't buy that and I just pitched the 2nd yeast pack. It's now been 4 days and the stupid thing still hasn't taken off. My gravity is still reading at 1.022. So I sanitized my plastic paddle and I stirred up the beer. Let's hope I didn't screw up the batch. Now onto the real issue..

The Bombs Away I-Paul-A is not a cheap beer. That sucker cost me $38 in materials alone. $13 in grain, $3 in yeast, and the rest in hops. I started heating up my strike water (the initial water which is added to the mash) and my electric thermostat says that I've reached my target temp of 168. Awesome. Of course I didn't check it and I dumped it in with the grain. I take a temp reading on the mash hoping to hit 150, the thermostat says 181. This is not possible. I freak out and run to grab my manual thermostat. It's at 135, which is way to low. I scramble to get it warmer by taking 1qt of water and bringing it to almost boiling. I dump that in which only brought the water up to 140. I just accept that i slightly screwed that up and try to recover. I let that soak for 40 minutes, then I hit it with the 2nd round of water at 160. I let that soak for 40 minutes then went onto the boil. In the end I was shooting for a gravity of 1.072 and hit it at 1.060. Not bad for a major issue. Tonight I put it into the 2nd stage for dry hopping after 5 days in the primary fermentor. This beer is tasting great and will only get better.

So onto what I learned:

• Brewing isn't necessarily a science, go with the flow. This is something that sometimes I get frustrated at my wife with because when she cooks she tends to go exactly by the book. I try to remind her that just because she doesn't do exactly what the book says doesn't mean the police are going to show up and arrest her. I needed to take a bit of my own medicine with the Bombs Away. In the end, it seems like everything worked just fine. 
• Aerate the Wort. I'll be making sure that I get a good aerate before pitching from now on so that I don't wreck 4+ hours of work. 

So I know I've been bad about updating the blog over the holiday's with my brewing, but here's some picture's over the brewing of the Bombs away. Enjoy!

The middle picture is cooling down the beer. The floor in the basement is ghetto. The 2nd to the bottom picture is me moving the beer into the secondary fermentor with the dry hops. We had a shower added to our upstairs bathroom which required cutting a whole in the wall. We haven't picked a color for the office yet. The last picture is the beer wrapped in towels to keep out the light hanging out in the office which is a wonderful 68 degrees.

Until next time...

Prost!

-Ryan